Dramatic Approach in Plato Studies: The Form of Dialogue as a Methodological Problem of Interpretation

Abstract

This article discusses the dramatic approach to the study of Plato’s texts, which takes shape as a multi-level methodology encompassing J. Press’s historiographical reinterpretation of the dialogue, T. V. Vasilyeva’s philosophical interpretation of form, and I. A. Protopopova’s analysis of its textual structure. Particular attention is paid to the crisis in Platonic studies during the second half of the 20th century, which stemmed from the contradiction between proponents of the dramatic approach – who emphasie the artistic form in their analysis of the dialogues – and proponents of doctrinalism, who rely on logical inferences and definitions. By analyzing the form and structure of the dialogues, the author identifies the cause of the divergence in interpretations of the corpus of the dialogues. The author also challenges T. V. Vasilyeva’s dramatic thesis that all definitions provided by Plato in the dialogues are based on analogy.